Network Engineering

The role of whitebox in a WISP/FISP MPLS core

Whitebox, if you aren’t familiar with it, is the idea of separating the network operating system and switching hardware into commodity elements that can be purchased separately. There was a good overview on whitebox in this StubArea51.net article a while back if you’re looking for some background.

Lately, in my work for IP ArchiTechs, I’ve had a number of clients interested in deploying IP Infusion with either Dell, Agema or Edge Core switches to build an MPLS core architecture in lieu of an L2 ring deployment via ERPs. Add to that a production deployment of Cumulus Linux and Edge Core that I’ve been working on building out and it’s been a great year for whitebox.

There are a number of articles written that extoll the virtues of whitebox for web scale companies, large service providers and big enterprises. However, not much has been written on how whitebox can help smaller Tier 2 and 3 ISPs – especially Wireless ISPs (WISPs) and Fiber ISPs (FISPs).

And the line between those types of ISPs gets more blurry by the day as WISPs are heavily getting into fiber and FISPs are getting into last mile RF. Some of the most successful ISPs I consult for tend to be a bit of a hybrid between WISP and FISP.

The goal of any ISP stakeholder whether large or small should be getting the lowest cost per port for any network platform (while maintaining the same level of service – or even better) so that service offerings can be improved or expanded without being required to pass the financial burden down to the end subscriber.

Whitebox is well positioned to aid ISPs in attaining that goal.

Whitebox vs. Traditional Vendor

Whitebox is rapidly gaining traction and working towards becoming the new status quo in networking. The days of proprietary hardware as the dominant force are numbered. Correspondingly, the extremely high R&D/manufacturing cost that is passed along to customers also seems to be in jeopardy for mainstream vendors like Cisco and Juniper.

Here are a few of the advantages that whitebox has for Tier2 and 3 ISPs:

Cost – it is not uncommon to find 48 ports of 10 gig and 4 ports of 40 gig on a new whitebox switch with licensing for under $10k. Comparable deployments in Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, etc typically exceed that number by a factor of 3 or more.

SDN and NFV – Open standards and development are at the heart of the SDN and NFV movement, so it’s no surprise that whitebox vendors are knee deep in SDN and NFV solutions. Because whitebox operating systems are modular, less cluttered and have built in hardware abstraction, SDN and NFV actually become much easier to implement.

No graymarket penalty – Because the operating system and hardware are separate, there isn’t an issue with obtaining hardware from the graymarket and then going to get a license with support. While the cost of the hardware brand new is still incredibly affordable, some ISPs leverage the graymarket to expand when faced with limited financial resources.

Stability – whitebox operating systems tend to implement open standards protocols and stick to mainstream use cases. The lack of proprietary corner case features allows the development teams for a whitebox NOS to be more thorough about testing for stability, interop and fixing bugs.

Focus on software – One of the benefits that comes from separating hardware and software for network equipment is a singular focus on software development instead of having to jump though hoops to support hundreds of platforms that sometimes have a very short product lifecycle. This is probably the single greatest challenge traditional vendors face in producing high quality software.

ISSU – Often touted as a competitive advantage by the likes of Cisco and others, In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU ) is now supported by some whitebox NOS vendors.

IP Infusion

IP Infusion (IPI) first got on my radar about 2 years ago when I was working through a POC for Cumulus Linux and just getting my feet wet in understanding the world of whitebox. What struck me as unique about them is that IP Infusion has been writing code for protocol stacks and modular network operating systems (ZebOS) for the last 20 years – essentially making them a seasoned veteran in turning out stable code for a NOS. As the commodity hardware movement started gathering steam, IP Infusion took all of the knowledge and experience from ZebOS and created OcNOS, which is a platform that is compatible with ONIE switches.

Earlier this year, I attended Networking Field Day 14 (NFD14) as a delegate and was pleasantly surprised to learn that IP Infusion presented at Networking Field Day 15 (NFD15) back in April. I highly recommend watching all of the NFD15 videos on IP Infusion, as you’d be hard pressed to find a better technical deep dive on IPI anywhere else. Some of the technical and background content here is taken from the video sessions at NFD15.

Background

Has its roots in GNU Zebra routing engine

Strong adherence to standards-based protocol implementations

Original white label NOS ZebOS has been around for 20+ years and is used by companies like F5, Fortinet and Citrix

Advantages

Very service provider focused with advanced feature sets for BGP/MPLS

OcNOS benefits from 20 years of white label NOS development and according to IP Infusion’s marketing material is reputed to have “six 9’s” of stability as observed by their larger ISP customers.

Perpetual licensing – once the license is purchased, the only recurring cost is the annual maintenance which is a much smaller fee (typically around 15% of the license)

Extensive API support – IPI has extensive API support for protocols like BGP to facilitate integration of automation and orchestration.

Easier hardware abstractions than proprietary NOS – look for chassis based whitebox and form factors beyond 1U in the future

Increased focus on the 1 Gbps switch market with Broadcom’s incredibly feature rich Qumran chipset so that Start-up and very small ISPs can still leverage the benefits of whitebox. Also, larger Tier 2 and 3 ISPs will have a switching solution for edge, aggregation and customer CPE needs.

Integrating OcNOS with MikroTik/Ubiquiti

I’ve specifically listed IP Infusion instead of doing a more in depth comparison of all the various whitebox operating systems, because IP Infusion is really positioned to be the best choice for Tier 2 and 3 ISPs due to the available feature set and modular approach to building protocol support. Going a step further, it’s a natural fit for ISPs that are running MikroTik or Ubiquiti as the OcNOS operating system fills in many of the gaps in protocol support (MPLS TE and FRR especially) that are needed when building an MPLS core for a rapidly expanding ISP.

While I’ve successfully built MPLS into many ISPs with MikroTik and Ubiquiti and continue to do so, there is a scaling limit that most ISPs eventually hit and need to start using ASIC based hardware with the ability to design comprehensive traffic engineering policies.

The good news is that MikroTik and Ubiquiti still have a role to play when building a whitebox core. Both work very well as MPLS PE routers that can be attached to the IP Infusion MPLS core. Last mile services can then be delivered in a very cost effective way leveraging technologies like VPLS or L3VPN.

Other Whitebox NOS offerings

There are a number of other whitebox network operating systems to choose from. Although the focus has been on IPI due to the feature set, Cumulus Linux and Big Switch are both great options if you have a need to deploy data center services.

Cumulus Linux is also rapidly working on developing and putting MPLS and more advanced routing protocol support into the operating system and it wouldn’t surprise me if they become more of a contender in the ISP arena in the next few years.

This actually touches on one of the other great benefits of whitebox. You can stock a common switch and put the operating system on that best fits the use case.

For example, the Dell S4048-ON switch (48x10gig,4x40gig) can be used for IPI, Cumulus Linux and Big Switch depending on the feature set required.

Some ISPs are getting into or already run cloud and colocation services in their data centers. If a compatible whitebox switch is used then stocking replacement hardware and operational maintenance of the ISP and Data Center portions of the network become far simpler.

Design elements of a WISP/FISP based on a whitebox MPLS core

Here are some examples of the most common elements we are trending towards as we start building WISPs and FISPs on a whitebox foundation coupled with other common low cost vendors like MikroTik and Ubiquiti.

Whitebox MPLS Core

As ISPs grow, the core tends to move from pure routers to Layer 3 switches to be able to better support higher speeds and take advantage of technologies like dark fiber and DWDM/CWDM to increase speeds. Many smaller ISPs are starting to compete using the “Google Fiber” model of selling 1Gbps synchronous to residential customers and need the extra capacity to handle that traffic.

MPLS support on ASICs has traditionally been extremely expensive with costs soaring as the port speeds increase from 1 gig to 10 gig and 40 gig. And yet MPLS is a fundamental requirement for the multi-tenancy needs of an ISP.

Leveraging whitebox hardware allows for MPLS switching in hardware at 10, 40 and 100 gig speeds for a fraction of the cost of vendors like Cisco and Juniper.

This allows ISPs to utilize dark fiber, wave and 10Gig+ layer 2 services in more cost effective way to increase the overall capacity of the core.

MPLS PE for Aggregation

MikroTik and Ubiquiti both have hardware with economical MPLS feature sets that work well as an MPLS PE. Having said that, I give MikroTik the edge here as Ubiquiti has only recently implemented MPLS and is still working on expanding the feature set.

MikroTik in contrast has had MPLS in play for a long time and is a very solid choice when aggregation and PE services are needed. The CCR series in particular has been very popular and stable as a PE router.

Virtual BGP Edge

MikroTik has made great strides in the high performance virtual market with the introduction of the Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) a little over a year ago.

Due to the current limitation of the MikroTik kernel to only using one processor for BGP, there has been a trend towards using x86 hardware with much higher clock speed per core than the CCR series to handle the requirement of a full BGP table.

The CHR is able to process changes in the BGP table much faster as a result and doesn’t suffer from the slow convergence speeds that can happen on CCRs with a large number of full tables.

Couple that with license costs that max out at $200 USD for unlimited speeds and the CHR becomes incredibly attractive as the choice for an edge BGP router.

NFV platform

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been getting a lot of press lately as more and more ISPs are turning to hypervisors to spin up resources that would traditionally be handled in purpose built hardware. NFV allows for more generic hardware deployments of hypervisors and switches so that more specific network functions can be handed virtually.

Some examples are:

BGP Edge routers (smiliar to the previous BGP CHR use case)

BRAS for PPPoE

QoE engines

EPC for LTE deployments

Security devices like IPS/IDS and WAF

MPLS PE routers

There are many ways to leverage x86 horsepower to get NFV into a WISP or FISP. One platform in particular that is gaining attention is Baltic Networks’ Vengeance router which runs VMWARE ESXi and can be used in a number of different NFV deployments.

We have been testing a Vengeance router in the StubArea51.net lab for several months and have seen very positive results. We will be doing a more in depth hardware review on that platform as a separate article in the future.

Closing thoughts

Whitebox is poised for rapid growth in the network world, as the climate is finally becoming favorable – even in larger companies – to use commodity hardware and not be entirely dependent on incumbent network vendors. This is already opening up a number of options for economical growth of ISPs in a platform that appears to be surpassing the larger vendors in reliability due to a more concentrated focus on software.

Commodity networking is here to stay and I look forward to the vast array of problems that it can solve as we build out the next generation of WISP and FISP networks.

Have you ever sat at your desk, hoping on a miracle, that somebody somewhere will develop a fully comprehensive application for tracking network information??? I know I have, along with millions of other fellow network professional’s I have to assume. What exactly am I referring to? IP addresses, vlans, VRF’s, Rack Elevations and on and on and on. We all have to keep up with this information, for most it is located in spreadsheets; some in notepads; others try to lock it all away in the vast empty space we call a brain.

So, the stage is set. Yes, there are claims of applications that can keep track of what your CORE router IP address is and what vlan you assigned to one of your customers, or even where in the bloody rack it sits in relation to your other devices. Some can even keep track of which VRF routing table your management lies in along with which physical port it connects to. Going a little further, maybe the application claims to give you a basic map layout to which you can refer to…

BUT, very few paid applications actually combine most of these functions into one and very little if any Open Source projects do at all. Although I can think of maybe one or two programs such as iTop or phpIPAM that combine some useful features such as IPAM and documentation pools etc.

Which brings us to Netbox.

Netbox is a swiss army knife, a gem, a diamond in the rough. It combines all the features every person in the networking world needs, wants and should have. We found Netbox on packetlife.net which is run by Jeremy Stretch and who subsequently developed Netbox. If you want to read more about how it came to fruition, take a look here.

Basically, this is what Netbox does and it does it extremely well, its also Open Source and completely FREE:

IPAM – IP Address Management

DCIM – Data Center Infrastructure Management

Single Converged Database

Circuit Provider Management

Vlan Management

VRF Management

Multi-Site (tenancy)

Rack Elevation

Connection Management – Interfaces/Console/Power

Customization Header For Logo’s etc

And More!

Here are a few screen shots to highlight some of the above features:

Hopefully if you are as geeky as we are, you are biting at the bit to give this puppy a try. In that respect, there are a couple of options for you to give it a go.

Follow the written documentation provided by Jeremy. I have to say, the instructions are pretty spot on. They are lengthy though with the components needed in Linux to allow Netbox to work. You can find the documentation here if you wish to try yourself. I will not be going over the installation steps in the post because they are cemented in the provided link; though have no fear, there is the second option…

I took all the brain hurt and built a Virtual Machine and installed/configured Netbox for you, just follow the below steps and voila. Currently I have it ported to an OVF which you can use with VMWare ESX, VMWare Workstation.

Just follow these easy steps and you will have Netbox up and running in about 15 minutes (vs ???, I cant remember how much time I spent but still!). This is for VMWare ESXi using vSphere client.

Pick whether you like to Lazy provision or Thick provision (if you don’t know what this means, you probably should not be using VMWare)

Click next

Click Finish

Now this gets a provisioned server with Netbox installed, but don’t power it up yet, there are still a few more steps to complete.

You will need to add an Ethernet Adapter.

Right click your server

Select ‘Edit Settings’

Click on ‘Add’

Select ‘Ethernet Adapter’

Follow the prompts and finish

Now you can start the server and open the console to watch it boot and perform the final couple of steps and you will be up and running.

Once the server is at the login prompt, go ahead and login using these credentials (all usernames and passwords for the site and database are the same):

Username: netadmin

Password: netadmin

At the #, type ‘ifconfig’ and find your current IP address (hopefully assigned by your DHCP server on your network if you installed the network adapter as above) and note it.

ifconfig

Again, at # do the following using nano (my personal preference), you could substitute for your own like vi.

sudo nano /opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/configuration.py

The only parameter you need to change is the ALLOWED_HOSTS which needs to be the IP Address of the server and/or DNS name you want to assign. This is a security precaution to only allow web requests to either the IP or DNS configured in this file. Once you have edited, exit and save.

In summary, Netbox seems to be the solution many of us are looking for to keep us straight in the networking life. I for one will be glad to get away from spreadsheets, documents strewn about and in-cohesive scribble by other people; to a centralized repository of cohesive information and network bliss!